Between Us Girls

The First Elected Female President?

In the United States, we are still awaiting the day when we can celebrate the election of a woman to the presidency, but for the country of Liberia, the wait is over.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a 67 year-old, Harvard educated economist, is the first female to be elected president in the history of Liberia.  For her, and much of the rest of Liberia's female population, the change to female leadership was long overdue.

Staggering unemployment and crumbling infrastructure due to a civil war lasting more than a decade are the legacy left to Sirleaf.  With unemployment at 85%, electricity distribution problems and only 1 textbook for every 27 children, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf certainly has her work cut out for her.  But she, and the many women who helped to elect her, have nothing but confidence in her ability to rise to these many challenges.

In the period of over 160 years in which Liberia has had independence, men have ruled and, in the words of many of the women they "have failed us."  Sirleaf adds that the male leadership "either by commission or omission enabled these wars" that have led to the devastation of their West African nation and that what the women of Liberia said clearly in the    last election was that "now is the time for change."

And change has come.  Half-way into her first term as president, Sirleaf has rebuilt the army, taken on corruption and begun to rebuild the infrastructure.  It remains to be seen just how much more can be accomplished under this powerful woman's command.

For more, watch the introductory four-minute video and check the WorldFocus website for an upcoming four-part series on Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Mid-Life Women - How We Can Change the World

As women, one thing that we all seem to share is the desire to make the world a better place.  Some of us do so by raising our kids to become caring and compassionate adults.  Some of us volunteer in our local communities.  Some of us do our part to create a better world by choosing careers in teaching, counseling, or other "helping" professions. 

The world is no doubt a better place as a result.  But in so many parts of our world, the valuable contributions that could be made by women are inhibited.  Women and girls are too often oppressed, abused or ignored and their power is just another wasted resource.  But there are efforts, both large and small, to change that.

March 8th was International Women's Day - a day designed to celebrate women's economic, social and political achievements and to also build awareness of both the obstacles and the opportunities for sharing in those achievements.

Last night, many theaters had a special showing of "A Powerful Noise."  The film documented the efforts of three women who have, against all the odds, succeeded in championing a cause near and dear to their hearts. 

We met Hanh who learned that she had contracted HIV after her husband and daughter died from AIDS. Bouncing

Stop Worrying and Start Living

So much of our time is spent regretting the past or planning for the future that we often fail to live in the present.  We know better.  We read the wisdom of spiritual masters.  We listen to pop psychology and motivational speakers.  Or do we?  Do we really listen to the message or do we simply hear it and forget it?

The trouble with life lessons of this magnitude is that they are harder to learn than we realize.  And if we've grown up in a society that trains us from early on to be future-oriented, always planning, always striving, always working towards something instead of being present in the moment, the lessons are that much more difficult.  Our habitual thought patterns create a way of being in the world and changing that takes concerted effort. 

"The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And the habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and it's ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings . . .

As the shadow follows the body,
as we think, so we become."

                                                - From the Dhammapada (Sayings of the Buddha)

Thinking about the past and the future, we become someone who resides there; someone who is absent in our own lives.  The good news is that life provides us with a regular supply of opportunities to learn how to stop worrying and

From Hot-Flashes to Hope: Hormones and Our Mid-Life Desire for Change

Waking at 3 a.m. with sweat-soaked pajamas, snapping at our husbands or co-workers, sleeping fitfully, cringing from headache pain, forgetting where we put our keys or where we were going in the first place, cringing from embarrassment as yet another shirt-soaking hot-flash overtakes us; women who are approaching mid-life know all-too-well the havoc that fluctuating hormone levels can wreak. 

From hot-flashes to heart palpitations, these delightful harbingers of "the change" can torment us for several months to several years before we actually stop having periods.  Perhaps that's why most women who are post-menopausal, rather than feeling old or sad, find themselves feeling more joyful and optimistic than ever.  Ahhhhh . . . sweet relief!

Our hormones have so much to say, but not just about how we feel physically.  These natural chemicals effect how we feel emotionally as well.  In fact, they might just have a lot more to say about who we are and what we want at any given point in our lives than we ever realized.

What We Most Need to Remember about Loving-Kindness

Buddhism teaches that the first of the Four Noblest Qualities of Mind (also known as the Brahma Viharas)is loving-kindness.  It is said that making the commitment to love life unconditionally in all its forms is the way of the Dharma.  But cultivating this attitude of loving-kindness isn't so easy. 

Our days are full of reasons to not feel loving or to behave kindly.  It seems there are obstacles everywhere we look.  We feel anger toward the child who just callously knocked our little one over on the playground and contempt for the parents who didn't teach their child better manners.  We feel impatience with the elderly driver plodding along ahead of us at a snail's pace.  We feel hatred toward the pedophile being led away in hand-cuffs on the evening news. 

Feeling loving towards all people sometimes seems all but impossible but we are encouraged, not just by Buddhism but by most faiths and philosophies, to develop this noble quality of mind little by little.  We are told to start with prayers or meditations that focus on feelings of loving-kindness and that direct them, at first, towards those we already love - our children, spouses and best friends.  Little by little we are encouraged to let those feelings of love flow a little further outward.  We might begin to include more distant family members, neighbors, animals and others.  Eventually, we need to try to send loving, kind thoughts and prayers towards those people we like the least - the boss who is making our life a living hell, the neighborhood kid who broke into our car looking for cash, the politicians who have forgotten that they work for us, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. 

Those of us who are so-inclined, struggle through this process.  We pray or meditate and try our best to send love out into the world.   But there is someone whom we often forget to include on our prayer or meditation list and this person is usually the one who needs love the most and gets the least.  Frequently neglected, sometimes downright hated, the person we most need to send love to is

Changing Yourself, Changing the World

So many of us look at the world and wonder what's gone wrong.  How did everything get so messed up?  Why is there so much hate in the world?  What are people thinking?  Why can't anything be easy?  Why can't we all just get along?

The most optimistic of us continue to hold out hope that things will get better.  Wars will cease, racism and other forms of oppression will fade, diseases will be cured and people will all get along.  But how all this will  come to pass remains a mystery.  Will it happen because we simply wish it to be . . . as if by magic?

"A goal without a plan is just a wish" 
Larry Elder

We all know it already, the fact that wishful thinking gets us nowhere.  We also know that many of the world's problems are much bigger than we are. Watch the evening news and you come to realize that it does us more of a disservice than a service.  Designed to keep us informed, it leaves us instead feeling like we know too much and can do too little.  The problems are so big and our influence so small.  How can we change the world?